Gift Giving Guy

Christmas gifts for five bucks? I had to re-read the email from my brother. I kept looking for a missing zero — maybe he meant a $50 gift limit. Even Holly Golightly worked within a $10 limit at Tiffany’s jewelry store. Nope, we’re trying a frugal $5 gift exchange this year with my adult siblings and their spouses. (There is no set limit for the children’s gifts.) Everyone brings a single wrapped gift that’s either homemade or worth $5. We’ll swap gifts at random with stealing rules, just like a white elephant gift exchange.

I replied with a counter-proposal: purchased gifts should have a pre-sales-tax price tag of $5. This rule change would include retail items with a $4.95 or $4.99 price point. Still, finding gifts for just one Lincoln bill requires some creativity. After all, a Christmas lump of coal from Borders bookstore costs $6.95.

My wife immediately thought of Three-Buck Chuck — Charles Shaw wine. Trader Joe’s, our favorite grocery chain, sells Charles Shaw wine for $2.99 a bottle. (In California, the price is $1.99, so it’s also called “Two-Buck Chuck.” The transportation cost bumps up the price in the Midwest.) If you have not tried Charles Shaw, don’t let the low price discourage you. The chardonnay is my favorite. In fact, Charles Shaw beat 350 other California chardonnays to win “Best Chardonnay from California” and “Best in Class” honors at the 2007 California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition.

So that covers 60 percent of the first gift. Later, we visited Pier One, primarily to find Christmas candles for our home. There I found a wine glass for two bucks in the budget glassware section. We checked off the first $5 present.

We started to look for my $5 gift to give. I scanned every shelf at Winkie’s Variety Store, an upscale version of the old five-and-dime store. It felt odd to check the price tag so often. Finally, I found a deck of Coca-Cola-themed playing cards for $3.50. I know several of my brothers like to play cards, and we were raised in a “Coca-Cola household.” I tried to pair the deck of cards with poker chips, but the total broke the $5 limit. At Winkie’s candy counter, my wife found five chocolate mint truffles wrapped in Jack of Hearts foil for $1.50. I liked the “caffeine and cards” theme, so I had my $5 gift.

But I wondered what else I might give within a $5 limit…

• A Charlie Brown Christmas, Miniature Edition ($4.95)
• Time Magazine’s Person of the Year featuring Barak Obama ($4.95)
• 4-by-6-inch Tuscan Tile recipe cards ($4.25)
• The Mad Libs Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Holidays ($3.99)
• One Dagoba organic milk chocolate bar ($3.49)
• Kona Coffee Bean Tree Seeds (provides one pound of coffee beans, $3.99)
• Bartender’s Pocket Guide ($3.99)
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Miniature Edition ($4.95)
• $5 worth of McDonald’s gift certificates (breakfast, lunch or dinner for five bucks)
• The Hardy Boys Guide to Life, Miniature Edition ($4.95)
• Nancy Drew’s Guide to Life, Miniature Edition ($4.95)